Gunman Arrested After Standoff At Dallas Walgreens
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A weekend crime spree came to an end on Sunday night after a carjacking, armed robbery and hostage standoff. Authorities arrested 30-year-old Jose Torres for aggravated kidnapping after investigators said that he held a woman inside of a Walgreens store located near the corner of Ledbetter Drive and Hampton Road.
When victim Ivan Lopez arrived at the store to get back his truck that a thief took from him at gunpoint, he had no idea that it was tied to a hostage crisis that had Walgreens customers fearing for their lives.
Lopez's stolen green Ford pickup truck was a welcome sight for the man, but he was not the only one relieved when his family found it in the Walgreens parking lot. "My parents called me. They said, 'Hey, we were driving down Hampton and Ledbetter and we saw your truck and a bunch of police,'" Lopez recalled.
Witnesses stated that a man jumped out of the truck after pulling up to the Walgreens store, and ran inside with police officers close behind him.
Everett Erving was sitting in his own truck near the store's entrance when, he said, police chased the suspect inside with their guns drawn. "They dropped their guns and they asked him to lay down, stop, lay down, stop. He didn't. He continued through the store, and that's when they hollered he had hostages," Erving said.
Police said that they were already trying to get the suspect to pull over for a traffic stop when he made it to Walgreens.
Customers said that the store was full of shoppers, including children. Siquana Upshaw was toward the back of the store when she realized that something was wrong. "The whole crowd at the front of the store said he got a gun, and they started running to the back of the store," Upshaw stated.
Officers surrounded the building and brought in a SWAT team to negotiate with the gunman. After some tense moments, the suspect surrendered. Nobody was injured during the standoff.
It turned out that police had been looking for Lopez's stolen truck since, they said, it was used at an armed robbery at a nearby Jack in the Box restaurant on Saturday morning. Lopez explained that the standoff suspect, seen in surveillance photographs, is the same man who stole his truck. "He just approached us, walking up my friend's driveway with a pistol around his waist, and he just said, 'Give me the keys,'" Lopez recalled.
Lopez heard reports about his truck being tied to the Jack in the Box robbery. He had hoped for the best, but he did not expect all that followed. "It was a matter of time," Lopez said. "I think, once they got his picture on the news and my truck, it was just a matter of time before we found it."
Officials have not confirmed that Torres is the same suspect in the other two incidents. For now, the entire case remains under police investigation. Torres remains behind bars. His bond has been set at $200,000.